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Dr.'s Hay Crush
Location: Wichita, Kansas Date: July 15, 1992 Story On the afternoon of July 15, 1992, Dr. Dan Caliendo, chief of Emergency Medicine of Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas, was on his 100-acre farm doing chores as he often did on his off time in the hospital. His wife, Mary Jo, caught up with him in her truck, pulled alongside his tractor, and asked what he was doing. He said he was going to give a bale of hay to a friend. Mary Jo said she'd go with him if he waited for her, since it was hot that day and she wanted to change clothes. As he drove the tractor to the large round hay bale, Dan set up a chain to hook it into the bucket. Although he knew he didn't have the right equipment to move it, he thought he could lift it with the bucket, get the chain on it, and attach it to the loader. "Dan enjoyed working around the farm. He could come home from a hard day's work, get out on his tractor, and relax," Mary Jo stated. As Mary Jo came back, Dan was lifting the hay bale with the bucket, despite the fact that it weighed around 900-1200 pounds. The bales that he had on his farm were really wet, which made them twice as heavy. Once he got it high enough to see under it, he was about to move the tractor. But the chain broke. The bale then fell on him, crushing him underneath it as it rolled off the tractor and onto the ground. Mary Jo, who watched in horror, got out of her truck and ran to the tractor. Dan was really in a bad sitting position and she could hardly understand what he was saying to her since he was having trouble talking. After a fifth try, he got the words and wanted to say goodbye. He suspected that he punctured his aorta and knew he was bleeding internally. Despite not wanting to leave him behind, Mary Jo went to her truck and drove to the house to call for help. After Mary Jo's call came, they dispatched rescue workers to the Caliendo farm. The nearest medics were 10 miles away, but off-duty paramedic Jim Smit, a friend of theirs, happened to be driving nearby. "My biggest fear is a fact that it was Dr. C, as we call him. He's a doctor with compassion and he cares for a patients and for the others in the Emergency Medical loop. He was one of those kind that come along just once in a million years. I was very afraid because I heard of accidents like this before and unfortunately, you usually get there to find a dead body," Smit stated. Mary Jo drove back to where Dan was, despite being so fearful that he was dead out there. When she got back to the tractor, he was still hanging in there. He said the first 25 years that they had together were great. When Smit arrived, he could see Dan holding the steering wheel in a death grip. He told Smit that he severed his spinal cord. Smit looked under his shirt and saw that the spinal column was broken and separated totally off to one side. He feared the broken ribs could puncture any number of organs and called for a Life Watch helicopter. As the paramedics arrived, Smit had one of them take over for Mary Jo as they began a difficult stabilization. "Sometimes, I think I wish it was me. I think I can handle the pain myself better than watching my loved one go through it," Mary Jo sadly admitted. After a slow, difficult stabilization, Dan was carefully packaged and slowly pulled off the tractor. As they got him off, he started having difficulty breathing. Then they loaded him into the helicopter and it took off as Mary Jo and Smit looked on. "I wanted to go with him really bad. I didn't want to be separated from him at that point. But there wasn't enough room and I couldn't. Dan and I have always been close. I love him with all my heart. I wouldn't want to live if anything happened to him." Dan was taken to the emergency room at Wesley Medical Center, the same place he worked at, and placed under a care of a team of people who knew him for years. Trauma surgeon Dr. Paul Harris felt his chest and learned that the ribs were so broken out of place that they lost their structure integrity. When Dr. Harris saw the x-rays of Dan's spine, he saw that there was so much displacement on one bone from another and sadly realized that Dan would never walk again. Dan's son, Scott, and daughter, Stephanie, came to the hospital as soon as they heard what happened. They didn't know if their father would survive or not and he told them that he loved them. During his recovery, Mary Jo and Dan's brother, Richard, took turns staying by his side when he was in a lot a pain and took shifts at night. "Dan did not want to live in this condition. He and I spent 90 gut-wrenching nights arguing over whether he should live or not. I just said whatever it takes, I gotta see that if Dan makes it through this even if it takes 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years, or 30 years. I didn't care," Richard said. Dan underwent a painful psychical therapy. But with the support of his family, he made it through it. A year since the accident that changed his life, he is adjusting being a paraplegic and is getting his life together. "I was aware of the danger and it could've been prevented for two weeks. After the accident, I kicked himself for being so stupid." Scott praised that what saved his father's life was the fact that his mother was present when the accident occurred and he would've have easily died if she wasn't and Stephanie concurs, "I always been very proud of my dad, long before he had his accident. I always thought he was pretty much one of the best guys there ever was. But, I find myself trying to spend more time with him than I did. You just kind of reminded that, 'Hey, he's not always gotta be there and you better make the most of the time you got.'" Amazingly after his recovery, Dan went back to work. He now uses a specialized wheelchair to go around the hospital and help him set in standing or sitting position while at work. "His first patient he saw was a great dose of medicine for himself," Mary Jo proudly said. "I've done a lot of things I didn't think I'd be able to do already. We all have limitations and I had them before my injury. I got different ones now. But they are becoming fewer as time goes by," Dan said. After the accident, Dan and Mary Jo grew more closer than ever before. "With the love we had with each other, I think we gotta make it and I'm looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him," Mary Jo said. Category:1992 Category:Kansas Category:Crush Injuries